Queens Hotel, Swansea

Located in the Maritime Quarter, a short walk from the city centre, this is a quality local's pub which counts Dylan Thomas as a former patron. The pub seems to have a previous two bar layout, now opened up into one long U-shaped room with a snug at one end. The main room is carpeted throughout with comfortable banquettes around the perimeter supplemented by standard chairs. High arched obscured glass windows run around two sides of the building and let plenty of light in. The servery has a nice panelled counter and a bar back decorated with an eclectic range of items including stuffed animals, bottles, flags, salvers, antlers, a ship's wheel, ceramics, paintings and what appears to be a missile case. As you might expect, there is a lot of nautical themed stuff on show, including an entire wall covered with photos of ships and the docks, a painting of a Swansea beach scene, knot displays and various ship's instruments. Some lovely period lampshades round out the décor, although there was also a TV in one corner showing muted coverage of a darts match whilst 50's tunes played quietly over the sound system. To the far right there is a small, snug type room, smartly decorated and very cosy when full, which offered a surprising amount of additional seating in the form of standard tables and chairs. I visited early on a Saturday evening and found the pub completely packed, with no seating left anywhere and large crowds of people stood in the bottom of the U where the main serving area is. This created an excellent atmosphere, with a predominantly older crowd mixing with a few glammed up youngsters clearly on their way to nearby Wind Street. The pub has appeared in recent editions of the Good Beer Guide and had four ales available on this visit - Theakston Best Bitter and Old Peculier, Fullers London Pride and Celt Castel Coch. I'd heard that the pub did a very good pint of Old Peculier, so I plumped for that and was surprised when the very pleasant barmaid asked if I was aware how strong it was (5.6%), as apparently customers have been caught out in the past. A nice touch I thought and I found the general vibe within was friendly and inclusive. This is a fine pub that seems to attract a good band of regulars but might otherwise get missed off people's itineraries due to its isolated position on the wrong side of Oystermouth Road. I enjoyed my time in here and had to wonder how I'd never so much as walked past the place prior to this visit. Well worth adding to any crawl around Central Swansea.

Spent many an afternoon and night in here,and good memories of times spent with my Dad..Lots of interesting pictures in the bar too...